There was some interesting behaviour this week in the markets with Centerbet, IASbet and Sportingbet all having a nap, while Betfair had a small move towards Labor and Sportsbet went berko!

The “Any Other Party” on Sportsbet (read “Coalition”) moved from $3.80 to a whopping $4.70, while Labor pulled in to $1.18, down from its $1.25 last Friday.

Sportsbet has opened up the range of implied probabilities for a Labor victory to a substantially large 7.6% across the 5 agencies, with Centerbet having Labor on a 72.3% win probability and Sportsbet coming in at the other end of the spectrum on a 79.9% implied probability. Read more »

This is an expanded version of something I wrote for the Crikey daily mail last week.

Does increasing consumer confidence boost the government vote? Orthodox wisdom would have us “yes” – good consumers are good government voters. If people are happy with their economic lot, if they’re happy with their economic expectations about the future, then they will – so the theory goes – reward the government for overseeing a fortuitous economic environment that boosts prosperity and their material well being.

However, the actual answer is somewhat different. Once upon a time there was indeed a strong relationship between consumer confidence and government political stocks -back in the boom/bust of the late 80’s and into the 1990’s recession period – and that probably explains why this myth is so enduring.

But a myth it generally is – at least in terms of the strength of the relationship – as we shall see. Read more »

Today’s Nielsen via the Fairfax press has the Coalition up 1 on the primaries and Labor steady to come in at 42/42, washing out into a two party preferred of 53/47 to Labor – a one point gain to the Coalition since last month. The Greens are on 9 (down 1) while the broad “Others” are on 5 (down 2). This comes from a sample of 1400, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.6% mark. You can see the full demographic tables here.

We’re going to do something a bit different today and look at approval ratings, preferred PM and win expectations by party vote. To start with, approval ratings for both Rudd and Abbott.

Read more »

This week’s Essential Report has the primaries running 42 (down 1)/ 40 (steady) to Labor, washing out into a two party preferred of 53/47 the same way – a one point gain to the Coalition since last week’s poll. The Greens are on 9 (up 1), while the broad “Others” are steady on 9. This comes from a two week rolling sample of 1816, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 2.3% mark.

This is the lowest ALP vote estimate that Essential has produced to date.

Additional questions this week are on attribute rating for Rudd and Abbott, population size and the private health insurance rebate means testing proposed by Labor. These additional questions run off a sample of 1009, giving us an MoE that maxes out around the 3.1% mark. Read more »

Another Friday, another sweep around the betting markets for the looming Federal Election. Over the past week, the ALP prices offered by our five agencies changed from “not at all” through to increasing by 7 cents. On the Coalition side of the equation, the change over the last week was between zero and a 20 cent reduction in the offered prices:

For all the noise over Garrett, the average increase in the probability of a Coalition victory over the last week was less than 1%.I guess the punters were far less excited over it’s consequences than was the Abbotariat in the paramilitary opinion wing of The Oz. The individual probabilities for the five agencies on our watch list come in like this: Read more »